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Post by nick8801 on Sept 28, 2021 6:03:09 GMT -6
Really great video on the top down approach by the great Kenny Gioia of "Reaper Mania" on YouTube. While the video shows the approach with Reaper, the concept could be used in any DAW. Really dig how quickly he gets a mix to come together. Also, I'll take any chance I get to talk up Reaper. It's my favorite DAW. Thoughts?
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Post by Guitar on Sept 28, 2021 7:15:08 GMT -6
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Post by Guitar on Sept 28, 2021 7:59:27 GMT -6
That was really satisfying to watch. I love audio, something simple and elegant like this is entertaining. I've done top down mixing a bit but never to this level of copy and paste with only two processors (not counting the limiter at the very end.) It's a compelling idea!
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 28, 2021 8:32:03 GMT -6
That was really satisfying to watch. I love audio, something simple and elegant like this is entertaining. I've done top down mixing a bit but never to this level of copy and paste with only two processors (not counting the limiter at the very end.) It's a compelling idea! Thanks for posting the video lol....I was tired. Yes, I love how he's only using two stock Reaper plugs to do the whole thing. Actually, in most of his videos he only uses stock Reaper plugs. It really makes me wish I didn't ever buy anything 3rd party till I learned all these! A good friend of mine just released a self produced record, recorded in Reaper with only stock plugins. Check it...I'll actually post a link this time!
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Post by indiehouse on Sept 28, 2021 14:47:31 GMT -6
A couple things I noticed. He Eq’d and compressed everything in solo. I thought that was a no-no?
Also, he removed EQ as he went lower and lower in hierarchy but never compression. Compression on master, compression on busses, compression on tracks.
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Post by jmoose on Sept 28, 2021 15:11:32 GMT -6
What is "top down" mixing?
Seen the term used several times on this site but I have no idea what it actually means. Mixing in a convertible?
Not a phrase that I ever recall hearing or being used. As in - this mix isn't quite what we're looking for... try it again from the top down?
?
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Post by Guitar on Sept 28, 2021 15:20:16 GMT -6
What is "top down" mixing? Seen the term used several times on this site but I have no idea what it actually means. Mixing in a convertible? Not a phrase that I ever recall hearing or being used. As in - this mix isn't quite what we're looking for... try it again from the top down? ? Start on the mix bus, focus on bus and group processing, with individual channel processing coming later... something like that.
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Post by BenjaminAshlin on Sept 28, 2021 15:52:42 GMT -6
It doesn't always mean that you mix the individual tracks last as such. But you have your busses and master bus process in place from the start.
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Post by enlav on Sept 28, 2021 16:40:46 GMT -6
A couple things I noticed. He Eq’d and compressed everything in solo. I thought that was a no-no? Also, he removed EQ as he went lower and lower in hierarchy but never compression. Compression on master, compression on busses, compression on tracks. The whole "don't EQ in solo" is more like a rule of thumb or "mindset" advice. As someone who started mixing live and then got into session work, I wouldn't dream of cutting solo EQ'ing out of the toolbox... I have definitely never focused on one guitar sound for like 20 minutes, pinpointing specific frequency bands to cut out with the narrowest Q, only to return to it later and realize it was removing necessary bite in the context of the mix.... never, have I ever, ever done that.
(When you know to keep yourself from hyper-focusing on a single thing, you can sort of make your decisions with the whole mix playing, solo the desired track and make the adjustments you desire without the noise of the whole mix in the way.)
I noticed that too on the compression... thought it was interesting. I assume it would result in less compression on the individual tracks. I'm pretty curious to try it out.
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Post by Guitar on Sept 28, 2021 16:52:32 GMT -6
It doesn't always mean that you mix the individual tracks last as such. But you have your busses and master bus process in place from the start. This is a logical conundrum. If something comes from the start, how can the other thing not always be later? But it's OK to try to define what this term means, it's not a technical term, but something that can be interpreted I think.
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 28, 2021 17:07:57 GMT -6
Man, however you wanna look at it, I think he gets really good results super quick. You can use the idea however you want, but I like the approach. Especially if someone sends me a live recording to mix. This is a great way to make it happen super quick.
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Post by Guitar on Sept 28, 2021 17:21:49 GMT -6
Man, however you wanna look at it, I think he gets really good results super quick. You can use the idea however you want, but I like the approach. Especially if someone sends me a live recording go mix. This is a great way to make it happen super quick. I've done sort of "half way" top down mixes a lot. Not to the extent of this video, but certainly to save time when I'm not in the mood for a deep mix. Maybe when the mix is pretty close, after a few minutes of tweaking, I go right over to the mix bus to get some moves done and get it 90% there. There can be a significant number of things happening on the mix bus, not just a gentle compression and EQ. Or spending a lot of time on drum bus rather than really digging into drum channels. I don't know if that counts as the identical concept of Kenny Gioia, but it's my own interpreted way of quick mixing using top down techniques.
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Post by BenjaminAshlin on Sept 28, 2021 23:06:28 GMT -6
It doesn't always mean that you mix the individual tracks last as such. But you have your busses and master bus process in place from the start. This is a logical conundrum. If something comes from the start, how can the other thing not always be later? But it's OK to try to define what this term means, it's not a technical term, but something that can be interpreted I think. Haha yes. I guess you are doing broad brush strokes first and then looking at the detail. It should be noted that all your tracks should be edited and cleaned up(resonant frequencies removed, leveled etc) for top down mixing to be really effective.
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Post by sirthought on Sept 28, 2021 23:53:30 GMT -6
I always start with my mix bus to get the song in vein I'm hearing it going.
It makes me have to do fewer moves to individual sources. I still process individual tracks, but the mix bus comes first.
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Post by thehightenor on Sept 29, 2021 0:20:13 GMT -6
Funny, when I saw the thread I guessed “top down mixing” to mean starting with the vocal and ending with adding bass and drums (the bottom) seemingly not.
But watching the video I can see I’ve recently adopted this approach of TDM.
So now my new approach has an official name. Cool.
I recently bought a vari mu bus comp and tube bus EQ and I’m into that from the get go plus a VCA first on the bus.
VCA - vari mu - EQ on my stereo bus.
Then I look at busses and last tracks.
It does work well, but I’m finding it relies on getting the arrangement and tracking perfect at the outset to leave less processing needed at the mix phase.
So if a mix sounds great with nothing more than faders and pans it’s going to sound fantastic with a top down mixing approach.
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 29, 2021 4:01:22 GMT -6
Funny, when I saw the thread I guessed “top down mixing” to mean starting with the vocal and ending with adding bass and drums (the bottom) seemingly not. But watching the video I can see I’ve recently adopted this approach of TDM. So now my new approach has an official name. Cool. I recently bought a vari mu bus comp and tube bus EQ and I’m into that from the get go plus a VCA first on the bus. VCA - vari mu - EQ on my stereo bus. Then I look at busses and last tracks. It does work well, but I’m finding it relies on getting the arrangement and tracking perfect at the outset to leave less processing needed at the mix phase. So if a mix sounds great with nothing more than faders and pans it’s going to sound fantastic with a top down mixing approach. What Comp/eq did you get??
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 29, 2021 4:06:39 GMT -6
Sometimes I dream of owning a summing mixer that feeds a bunch of outboard gear. All hard-wired up so I just have to take care of routing in my daw. Basically this top down approach, but with some sexy analogue gear instead of plugins. I would take care of all the individual track cleanup itb, but then run all my busses out to dedicated chains. The summing mixer bus would run into its own chain as well. That might be a fun thread to start. “Help me build my dream summing bus rig”.
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Post by keymod on Sept 29, 2021 4:55:40 GMT -6
Sometimes I dream of owning a summing mixer that feeds a bunch of outboard gear. All hard-wired up so I just have to take care of routing in my daw. Basically this top down approach, but with some sexy analogue gear instead of plugins. I would take care of all the individual track cleanup itb, but then run all my busses out to dedicated chains. The summing mixer bus would run into its own chain as well. That might be a fun thread to start. “Help me build my dream summing bus rig”. This is the whole point of a good hybrid setup, no ?
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 29, 2021 5:39:01 GMT -6
Sometimes I dream of owning a summing mixer that feeds a bunch of outboard gear. All hard-wired up so I just have to take care of routing in my daw. Basically this top down approach, but with some sexy analogue gear instead of plugins. I would take care of all the individual track cleanup itb, but then run all my busses out to dedicated chains. The summing mixer bus would run into its own chain as well. That might be a fun thread to start. “Help me build my dream summing bus rig”. This is the whole point of a good hybrid setup, no ? I'd say so!
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Post by drumsound on Sept 29, 2021 8:01:12 GMT -6
It doesn't always mean that you mix the individual tracks last as such. But you have your busses and master bus process in place from the start. I always mix INTO my mix buss comp. I don't usually make a munch of subgroups so I guess I'm kinda "top down" mixing. I also though this would mean Vocals first... I also avoid solo as much as possible. He may have been doing a lot in solo because the video is a tutorial. When I teach I do you solo more often so that the students can hear what is happening (or has happened) to the track in question.
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Post by anders on Sept 29, 2021 8:32:28 GMT -6
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Post by thehightenor on Sept 30, 2021 1:32:46 GMT -6
Funny, when I saw the thread I guessed “top down mixing” to mean starting with the vocal and ending with adding bass and drums (the bottom) seemingly not. But watching the video I can see I’ve recently adopted this approach of TDM. So now my new approach has an official name. Cool. I recently bought a vari mu bus comp and tube bus EQ and I’m into that from the get go plus a VCA first on the bus. VCA - vari mu - EQ on my stereo bus. Then I look at busses and last tracks. It does work well, but I’m finding it relies on getting the arrangement and tracking perfect at the outset to leave less processing needed at the mix phase. So if a mix sounds great with nothing more than faders and pans it’s going to sound fantastic with a top down mixing approach. What Comp/eq did you get?? The VCA I already had for a while Roll Music RMS 755. The tube units are Thermionic Phoenix Mastering Plus vari mu and Thermionic The Swift EQ (balanced option) All three units have a really wide bandwidth and the Thermionic units sound very big, warm and extremely detailed … it makes for an expansive stereo field with heaps of depth and vibe, which is my preference. The units cost a bit for me with import duty as they’re made in Britain but hopefully they’ll give many years of good service are they appear to be very well made.
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 30, 2021 4:04:50 GMT -6
What Comp/eq did you get?? The VCA I already had for a while Roll Music RMS 755. The tube units are Thermionic Phoenix Mastering Plus vari mu and Thermionic The Swift EQ (balanced option) All three units have a really wide bandwidth and the Thermionic units sound very big, warm and extremely detailed … it makes for an expansive stereo field with heaps of depth and vibe, which is my preference. The units cost a bit for me with import duty as they’re made in Britain but hopefully they’ll give many years of good service are they appear to be very well made. Wow, that’s a serious chain! Must sound gorgeous.
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Post by thehightenor on Sept 30, 2021 6:01:18 GMT -6
The VCA I already had for a while Roll Music RMS 755. The tube units are Thermionic Phoenix Mastering Plus vari mu and Thermionic The Swift EQ (balanced option) All three units have a really wide bandwidth and the Thermionic units sound very big, warm and extremely detailed … it makes for an expansive stereo field with heaps of depth and vibe, which is my preference. The units cost a bit for me with import duty as they’re made in Britain but hopefully they’ll give many years of good service are they appear to be very well made. Wow, that’s a serious chain! Must sound gorgeous. It does sound really good. I love Dave Gilmour's solo album's sound (not musically as such) but just that big expansive sound like a kaleidoscope of sound emerging from the monitors very 3D - I can't possibly afford his studio with that huge Neve 88 desk and that million dollars of vintage outboard he has - but using Softubes Console 1 (and the UAD Neve 88 strip) plus this stereo bus chain - it get's me close enough to make me smile. I use a HEDD 192 to feed the chain and return it to Cubase - and even though I have these tube units I still roll in some HEDD FX - those Tape and Pentode knobs have something really unique about the way they add a very slight touch of compression that have no time domain parameters - the FX particularly the pentode seem to add even more sparkle and width - Dave Hill is very, clever designer!!
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Post by robschnapf on Sept 30, 2021 14:06:32 GMT -6
Top down mixing No thanks
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